


Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

by Chell



Category: Sword Art Online
Genre: M/M, Monologue, Slash, online game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 10:05:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1222234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chell/pseuds/Chell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Kazuto Kirigaya was Akihiko Kayaba's favorite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

**Author's Note:**

> \- "wow look at all these 25 SAO fics"  
> \- I may need a beta  
> \- this is a bit cracky in that y'know that serious way  
> \- totally based on the anime, forgive me for not including The Girlfriend  
> \- AM I THE only person who ships it?  
> \- (I should've written a fic involving Kayaba / voyeurism / Kirito-and-Asuna's-lovemaking-session but for better or for worse I did not)

" **Heathcliff** ". He liked that name. That was the name the man called Akihiko Kayaba had been using for his online identity for a few years now - perhaps a decade, as it came to him. It all began in high school, when he first heard of the name, and thought it sounded pretty cool. It was the name of a character from a book, as he had heard, and of course he had to go and read the book. 

   Much to his surprise, he came to realize that he could relate to Heathcliff a lot; Although they were nothing alike, in the sense that Akihiko never had fallen victim to a hot-blooded passion or motive, he could relate to his most deranged thoughts and fantasies, and Heathcliff was pretty much the hero he would be if there were heroes, or so he thought. That was around the time when he started adopting the username, perhaps deep down intending to act as the hero he wasn't off the Net.

   Off the Net, he was still just Akihiko Kayaba. "Just" that. Not the type to be a protagonist of tragic love stories, nor mysterious turns of events; Just one of many prodigies in the game developing business, and one who happened to be a bit too much into fiction. Fictional men and their wars, stories of deep passions and days of glory - the greater things, things that might have never existed in the real world for all he knew, and after all, what was real?

   "What is reality" was one of those philosophical questions that would come to bother him. After all, what makes a thing real or not? The limits of the thing they valued so much called "reality" was one thing that never quite made sense for the socially averse "late 90's child". As it is: Somehow, things no person alive has ever seen may be considered reality, but existing personalities whom everybody knows and makes an actual impact on people's lives aren't, and, hell, even the money people use for buying _food_ isn't real, so if that's the case, why bother with what's real? Reality might as well be just another word for boundaries, and for boundaries he didn't care much.

   Eventually, the idea of creating a world as real as any came to him. Not because he intended to do something huge, but out of genuine curiosity; What was supposed to be an individual experience eventually grew into a social experience and a phenomenon, and thus, _the_ Sword Art Online happened. Hadn't the beta test amused him so much, Akihiko thought, maybe it wouldn't even have grown to such an extent. Oh, the causality of the world.

  And among the many players of the universe he grew to enjoy observing, Akihiko was particularly fond of the one named Kirito.

   That Kirito, despite being only a teenage boy, was very much the embodiment of tragic hero. He became known in that universe for being a top solo player; And it was easy to tell, Kirito wasn't just the ordinary teenage boy. Like a few other pro players - the best of the best, so to speak - that boy was someone who truly treated that world as real as any. Not simply because of the possibility of a brain death, because of course everyone there had been forced to do so, but he simply did care enough, maybe because he also didn't care enough for "real".

   That was clear from the way he treated the players, his parties, and guilds, and the way he enjoyed having a meal with his (in-game) sweetheart. He was very much honest, his emotions were completely in the game, and that was what Akihiko Kayaba was hoping to be proven real - _real_ heroes, no matter what common sense would have said against them.

   Because it wasn't so much that Kirito belonged to Kazuto, but it was more the other way around; Just like "the" Heathcliff was Akihiko _himself_ ,Kirito was Kazuto. That was their world more than any other - and they weren't necessarily against it.

   Akihiko respected him for that. More than "respect", Akihiko grew really fond of Kirito's drama. Possibly the best show, yes, the best show in all of Aincrad, hands down.

   Akihiko respected him even more for tearing apart his plans for the world that should have been his, because now it was clearly only his as much as it was anyone else's. It just was, and what they had gone through was very real, wasn't it?

   (And wasn't he cute to boost? How terrible.)

   And finally, quite literally, Kirito had been the one to turn his world upside down. By being the proof that, yes, heroic tales are very much "real", and heroic deeds do exist, and he was just someone Akihiko could really cheer up for. In the end, the fact that he had "lost" didn't matter; As long as his consciousness were there, it would certainly be cheering for a hero, and that was a good end in his book.


End file.
